Uncle Tom's Cabin
was that he succeeded very easily in persuading her that the “path of
duty” lay in the direction of New Orleans, and that she must go with
him to take care of Eva, and keep everything from going to wreck and
ruin during the frequent illnesses of his wife. The idea of a house
without anybody to take care of it went to her heart; then she loved
the lovely little girl, as few could help doing; and though she
regarded Augustine as very much of a heathen, yet she loved him,
laughed at his jokes, and forbore with his failings, to an extent which
those who knew him thought perfectly incredible. But what more or other
is to be known of Miss Ophelia our reader must discover by a personal
acquaintance.
There she is, sitting now in her state-room, surrounded by a mixed
multitude of little and big carpet-bags, boxes, baskets, each
containing some separate responsibility which she is tying, binding up,
packing, or fastening, with a face of great earnestness.
“Now, Eva, have you kept count of your things? Of course you
haven’t,—children never do: there’s the spotted carpet-bag and the
little blue band-box with your best bonnet,—that’s two; then the India
rubber satchel is three; and my tape and needle box is four; and my
band-box, five; and my collar-box; and that little hair trunk, seven.
What have you done with your sunshade? Give it to me, and let me put a
paper round it, and tie it to my umbrella with my shade;—there, now.”
“Why, aunty, we are only going up home;—what is the use?”
“To keep it nice, child; people must take care of their things, if they
ever mean to have anything; and now, Eva, is your thimble put up?”
“Really, aunty, I don’t know.”
“Well, never mind; I’ll look your box over,—thimble, wax, two spools,
scissors, knife, tape-needle; all right,—put it in here. What did you
ever do, child, when you were coming on with only your papa. I should
have thought you’d a lost everything you had.”
“Well, aunty, I did lose a great many; and then, when we stopped
anywhere, papa would buy some more of whatever it was.”
“Mercy on us, child,—what a way!”
“It was a very easy way, aunty,” said Eva.
“It’s a dreadful shiftless one,” said aunty.
“Why, aunty, what’ll you do now?” said Eva; “that trunk is too full to
be shut down.”
“It _must_ shut down,” said aunty, with the air of a general, as she
squeezed the things in, and sprung upon the lid;—still a little gap
remained about the mouth of the trunk.
“Get up here, Eva!” said Miss Ophelia, courageously; “what has been
done can be done again. This trunk has _got to be_ shut and
locked—there are no two ways about it.”
And the trunk, intimidated, doubtless, by this resolute statement, gave
in. The hasp snapped sharply in its hole, and Miss Ophelia turned the
key, and pocketed it in triumph.
“Now we’re ready. Where’s your papa? I think it time this baggage was
set out. Do look out, Eva, and see if you see your papa.”
“O, yes, he’s down the other end of the gentlemen’s cabin, eating an
orange.”
“He can’t know how near we are coming,” said aunty; “hadn’t you better
run and speak to him?”
“Papa never is in a hurry about anything,” said Eva, “and we haven’t
come to the landing. Do step on the guards, aunty. Look! there’s our
house, up that street!”
The boat now began, with heavy groans, like some vast, tired monster,
to prepare to push up among the multiplied steamers at the levee. Eva
joyously pointed out the various spires, domes, and way-marks, by which
she recognized her native city.
“Yes, yes, dear; very fine,” said Miss Ophelia. “But mercy on us! the
boat has stopped! where is your father?”
And now ensued the usual turmoil of landing—waiters running twenty ways
at once—men tugging trunks, carpet-bags, boxes—women anxiously calling
to their children, and everybody crowding in a dense mass to the plank
towards the landing.
Miss Ophelia seated herself resolutely on the lately vanquished trunk,
and marshalling all her goods and chattels in fine military order,
seemed resolved to defend them to the last.
“Shall I take your trunk, ma’am?” “Shall I take your baggage?” “Let me
’tend to your baggage, Missis?” “Shan’t I carry out these yer, Missis?”
rained down upon her unheeded. She sat with grim determination, upright
as a darning-needle stuck in a board, holding on her bundle of umbrella
and parasols, and replying with a determination that was enough to
strike dismay even into a hackman, wondering to Eva, in each interval,
“what upon earth her papa could be thinking of; he couldn’t have fallen
over, now,—but something must have happened;”—and just as she had begun
to work herself into a real distress, he came up, with his usually
careless motion, and giving Eva a quarter of the orange he was eating,
said,
“Well, Cousin Vermont, I suppose you are all ready.”
“I’ve been ready, waiting, nearly an hour,” said Miss Ophelia; “I began
to be really concerned about you.
“That’s a clever fellow, now,” said he. “Well, the carriage is waiting,
and the crowd are now off, so that one can walk out in a decent and
Christian manner, and not be pushed and shoved. Here,” he added to a
driver who stood behind him, “take these things.”
“I’ll go and see to his putting them in,” said Miss Ophelia.
“O, pshaw, cousin, what’s the use?” said St. Clare.
“Well, at any rate, I’ll carry this, and this, and this,” said Miss
Ophelia, singling out three boxes and a small carpet-bag.
“My dear Miss Vermont, positively you mustn’t come the Green Mountains
over us that way. You must adopt at least a piece of a southern
principle, and not walk out under all that load. They’ll take you for a
waiting-maid; give them to this fellow; he’ll put them down as if they
were eggs, now.”
Miss Ophelia looked despairingly as her cousin took all her treasures
from her, and rejoiced to find herself once more in the carriage with
them, in a state of preservation.
“Where’s Tom?” said Eva.
“O, he’s on the outside, Pussy. I’m going to take Tom up to mother for
a peace-offering, to make up for that drunken fellow that upset the
carriage.”
“O, Tom will make a splendid driver, I know,” said Eva; “he’ll never
get drunk.”
The carriage stopped in front of an ancient mansion, built in that odd
mixture of Spanish and French style, of which there are specimens in
some parts of New Orleans. It was built in the Moorish fashion,—a
square building enclosing a court-yard, into which the carriage drove
through an arched gateway. The court, in the inside, had evidently been
arranged to gratify a picturesque and voluptuous ideality. Wide
galleries ran all around the four sides, whose Moorish arches, slender
pillars, and arabesque ornaments, carried the mind back, as in a dream,
to the reign of oriental romance in Spain. In the middle of the court,
a fountain threw high its silvery water, falling in a never-ceasing
spray into a marble basin, fringed with a deep border of fragrant
violets. The water in the fountain, pellucid as crystal, was alive with
myriads of gold and silver fishes, twinkling and darting through it
like so many living jewels. Around the fountain ran a walk, paved with
a mosaic of pebbles, laid in various fanciful patterns; and this,
again, was surrounded by turf, smooth as green velvet, while a
carriage-drive enclosed the whole. Two large orange-trees, now fragrant
with blossoms, threw a delicious shade; and, ranged in a circle round
upon the turf, were marble vases of arabesque sculpture, containing the
choicest flowering plants of the tropics. Huge pomegranate trees, with
their glossy leaves and flame-colored flowers, dark-leaved Arabian
jessamines, with their silvery stars, geraniums, luxuriant roses
bending beneath their heavy abundance of flowers, golden jessamines,
lemon-scented verbenum, all united their bloom and fragrance, while
here and there a mystic old aloe, with its strange, massive leaves, sat
looking like some old enchanter, sitting in weird grandeur among the
more perishable bloom and fragrance around it.
The galleries that surrounded the court were festooned with a curtain
of some kind of Moorish stuff, and could be drawn down at pleasure, to
exclude the beams of the sun. On the whole, the appearance of the place
was luxurious and romantic.
As the carriage drove in, Eva seemed like a bird ready to burst from a
cage, with the wild eagerness of her delight.
“O, isn’t it beautiful, lovely! my own dear, darling home!” she said to
Miss Ophelia. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“’T is a pretty place,” said Miss Ophelia, as she alighted; “though it
looks rather old and heathenish to me.”
Tom got down from the carriage, and looked about with an air of calm,
still enjoyment. The negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the
most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in
his heart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a
passion which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the
ridicule of the colder and more correct white race.
St. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss
Ophelia made her remark on his premises, and, turning to Tom, who was
standing looking round, his beaming black face perfectly radiant with
admiration, he said,
“Tom, my boy, this seems to suit you.”
“Yes, Mas’r, it looks about the right thing,” said Tom.
All this passed in a moment, while trunks were being hustled off,
hackman paid, and while a crowd, of all ages and sizes,—men, women, and
children,—came running through the galleries, both above and below to
see Mas’r come in. Foremost among them was a highly-dressed young
mulatto man, evidently a very _distingue_ personage, attired in the
ultra extreme of the mode, and gracefully waving a scented cambric
handkerchief in his hand.
This personage had been exerting himself, with great alacrity, in
driving all the flock of domestics to the other end of the verandah.
“Back! all of you. I am ashamed of you,” he said, in a tone of
authority. “Would you intrude on Master’s domestic relations, in the
first hour of his return?”
All looked abashed at this elegant speech, delivered with quite an air,
and stood huddled together at a respectful distance, except two stout
porters, who came up and began conveying away the baggage.
Owing to Mr. Adolph’s systematic arrangements, when St. Clare turned
round from paying the hackman, there was nobody in view but Mr. Adolph
himself, conspicuous in satin vest, gold guard-chain, and white pants,
and bowing with inexpressible grace and suavity.
“Ah, Adolph, is it you?” said his master, offering his hand to him;
“how are you, boy?” while Adolph poured forth, with great fluency, an
extemporary speech, which he had been preparing, with great care, for a
fortnight before.
“Well, well,” said St. Clare, passing on, with his usual air of
negligent drollery, “that’s very well got up, Adolph. See that the
baggage is well bestowed. I’ll come to the people in a minute;” and, so
saying, he led Miss Ophelia to a large parlor that opened on the
verandah.
While this had been passing, Eva had flown like a bird, through the
porch and parlor, to a little boudoir opening likewise on the verandah.
A tall, dark-eyed, sallow woman, half rose from a couch on which she
was reclining.
“Mamma!” said Eva, in a sort of a rapture, throwing herself on her
neck, and embracing her over and over again.
“That’ll do,—take care, child,—don’t, you make my head ache,” said the
mother, after she had languidly kissed her.
St. Clare came in, embraced his wife in true, orthodox, husbandly
fashion, and then presented to her his cousin. Marie lifted her large
eyes on her cousin with an air of some curiosity, and received her with
languid politeness. A crowd of servants now pressed to the entry door,